Exploration, choices, relationships, compromises: the stuff of a young adult’s life. We meet Lucy on her post high school backpacking trip to Italy, and continue along as she starts college in Philadelphia at a school very much like SJU. A riff on E.M. Forster’s classic A Room with a View, this makes for great summer reading: take a vicarious European trip and then get psyched for fall semester by looking at our campus experience from a student’s perspective.

A monthly offering from Drexel Library’s staff about the books we’ve read.

Stillness at Appomattox
Catton, Bruce

In honor of the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, my book club chose A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton as one of our selections.

This well-written recounting of the final year of war for the Army of the Potomac was mesmerizing. The research was based on journals, letters, diaries, and other documents so that much of the story is from the perspective of the soldiers involved in the struggle. You were immediately drawn into the conflict and the conditions that the soldiers had to endure, the constant marching, hunger, and lack of sleep. I felt that I could taste the dust that was kicked up by thousands of marching feet, enjoyed the camaraderie of the troops, and shared in their longing for victory. Not being one who normally reads military history, I found that I couldn’t put it down and could not help but be moved by the raw courage of these men.

Stillness at Appomattox won the Pulitzer Prize for History and the National Book Award for Nonfiction. It is the final volume of Catton’s The Army of the Potomac trilogy, but can be read on its own. It can be found on the third floor in the Drexel Library at E470.2.C36S.

A monthly offering from Drexel Library’s staff about the books we’ve read.

The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World
Levine, Steve

Steve Levine’s The Powerhouse unfolds the hectic history of modern battery technology, specifically the now common renditions of the lithium-ion core of modern electronics and electric vehicles. Levine weaves this story as he follows both the growth of the battery division of the Argonne National Laboratory and the network of researchers who share this facility. Levine delves into the personal backgrounds and driving ambitions, and the sometimes fiercely competitive nature, of the leading researchers responsible for the development of modern battery technologies.

Levine sets this research against the backdrop of late twentieth and early twenty-first century nationalist concerns and ambitions to not only develop, but to own and claim dominance, over the battery technology needed to manufacture and deploy fleets of electric vehicles. However, this is a struggle between not just nations, including the United States and China, nor simply well-known corporations, but the individual researchers and developers themselves.

The Powerhouse is an engaging work, full of detail but not overly technical or limited to a niche audience. It is highly recommended for anyone interested in modern technology, the race to build an electric vehicle that provides both performance and longevity, or the developments leading to modern developments in power storage and the recent surge of interest in Tesla vehicles and technologies.

The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World is available in the Popular Reading section on the First Floor of the Post Learning Commons.

A monthly offering from Drexel Library’s staff about the books we’ve read.

Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb
Jonathan Fetter-Vorm

Trinity is an excellent graphic novel detailing the history and the efforts that went into the development of the most destructive weapon in human history. As with most graphic novels, the illustrations complement the text and dialogue masterfully. The book is written with succinct conciseness getting to the point without the drawn-out, convoluted exposition a longer non-fiction work would labor over.

The book begins with a brief history of the discovery of polonium, radium, and their natural byproduct: radiation. It outlines the discovery of the structure of atoms, the potential to harness incredible energy—a concept not lost on writers like H. G. Wells—and the eventual race to be the first to produce and control this energy.

Trinity examines not only the efforts to build atomic weapons, but looks also at the ethical dilemma of those involved with the secret Manhattan Project, the use of the first atomic weapons, the aftermath of their use, and the ignorance of a world gone mad in a race to produce weapons so powerful that their use could result in the total annihilation of all life on Earth. Correlations are made between Zeus’ punishment of Prometheus for giving man the tool of fire before he was intelligent enough to use it and the development of nuclear power by man himself in a world still not yet intelligent enough to fully comprehend the consequences of possessing such devastating power.

Trinity is available in the Popular Reading section on the First Floor of the Post Learning Commons.

A monthly offering from Drexel Library’s staff about the books we’ve read.

Once Upon a Grind
Cleo Coyle

Once Upon a Grind is the 14th installment to Celo Coyle’s Coffeehouse Mystery series. Clare Cosi is a coffeehouse manager who is drawn into a series of insidious adventures during a Fairy Tale Fall event in New York when Prince Charming is mysteriously sickened and the Pink Princess is turned into a Sleeping Beauty. An unsolved murder during the Cold War is somehow linked to a present-day murder and attempted murder. Clare soon becomes embroiled in a quandary of espionage as she works to clear international coffee hunter, and ex-husband, Matt Allegro, who is framed for murder and attempted murder.

Though part of a continuing series, this book is an excellent stand-alone read, as are its predecessors. Cleo Coyle’s characters are down-to-earth and lovable.

Ever wanted to know what it’s like being Neil Patrick Harris? If you read his Choose Your Own Autobiography you will find out! Viewers of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, How I met your Mother, and fans of Hedwig and the Angry Itch on Broadway already know how funny he is. You will love experiencing life through NPH’s eyes with this whimsical read. It’s available in the library’s collection.

January 2015 A monthly offering from Drexel Library’s staff about the books we’ve read.

The Museum of Extraordinary Things
Alice Hoffman

The Museum of Extraordinary Things is a beautifully written piece of historical fiction that is so touchingly human, yet surreal and at times even magical. These unreal moments exists side by side with those of searing reality as we are drawn into the daily struggle of immigrants trying to make their way in a new land. Descriptions of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire along with the fire that destroyed Dreamland in Coney Island complete the picture by setting the time and place of this tale in the early 20th century in the very unstable New York City.

Coralie, promoted as a Mermaid in the “museum” and Eddie, a photographer whom she has loved from a distance, exist on the fringes of society, along with the many odd creatures featured in the museum. Through Hoffman’s storytelling, instead of shock and horror, we find ourselves sympathetic towards these malformed creatures flaunted in the “museum” and manipulated by the malicious “Professor,” Coralie’s father.

December 2014 A monthly offering from Drexel Library’s staff about the books we’ve read.

Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues
Martin J. Blaser

We may not think about it often, but we share our bodies with trillions of bacteria which have evolved together with us in a usually beneficial symbiosis. Widespread use of antibiotics in humans and animals is having unintended consequences because they kill microbes indiscriminately: good as well as bad. This book goes far beyond the well-known phenomenon of antibiotic-resistant germs.

Dr. Blaser, an infectious disease expert at NYU, explains the link between antibiotics and the increased prevalence during the 20th century of a host of chronic health problems: asthma, allergies, obesity, GERD, Chron’s disease, gluten intolerance and, possibly, autism. Antibiotics, especially those given in early childhood, impede the natural development of a healthy bacterial environment in the digestive system. Delivery by C-section, now at a whopping 1/3 of all U.S. births, also interferes with the immune system because the baby misses picking up important microbes residing in the mother’s birth canal. Recommendations include minimizing antibiotic use to truly necessary cases, using targeted rather than wide spectrum drugs, and avoiding optional caesarean births. Blaser is hopeful that further research will lead to the development of therapies to reintroduce specific healthy bacteria into our digestive systems when a course of live-saving antibiotics is unavoidable.

November 2014 A monthly offering from Drexel Library’s staff about the books we’ve read.

Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 : a novel
Francine Prose

Francine Prose’s Lovers at the Chameleon Club describes the creative, lively, and dangerous world of Paris in the 30’s. The story is told from different accounts, from the brash male american novelist to the present day amateur researcher who is exploring the idea of evil and its many forms. Prose based the story on an actual photograph, “Lesbian Couple at Le Monocle, 1932” by Brassai, in which the cross dressing lesbian Violette Morris is sitting with her lover. Morris was the inspiration for the character Lou Villars, who is also an auto racer and failed Olympic hopeful. Like Morris, Villars’ character is banned from auto racing from the French and in anger betrays her country by working for the Gestapo during World War II.

The book is not simply a look at Villars’ life but also a look at how history is perceived and remembered through different voices. One source is from a photographer of the time, who tells his story through his letters home to his family in Hungary. Other versions are through memoirs, like the arts patron and Resistance member Baroness Lily de Rossignol who is looking back to a time in which Paris changed greatly from 1932 – 1944. Then there is the amateur historian, Nathalie Dunois, who seems to be writing the history to suit her own theories. Taken altogether, Lovers at the Chameleon Club presents not only a snapshot of that time in Paris but a look at how the time was remembered by those who experienced it.

September 2014 A monthly offering from Drexel Library’s staff about the books we’ve read.

Detroit: An American Autopsy
Charlie LeDuff

Charlie LeDuff, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, was born and raised in the once-proud city of Detroit – a city once in the vanguard, now a place of rust, decay, and desolation returning to its wild roots. But it seems there is something about the dying city that tugs at the author’s heartstrings and begs for him to share its voice with the rest of us.

So he moves back to Detroit — actually only to the edge of it — and shares with us some of his experiences along the way. We hear about the plight of a group of firefighters in a city that lacks basic resources. We laugh with them, we cry with them. We feel a bit of their pain. Sometimes it gets deeply personal as we hear about his childhood and his extended family members, some who were lost to the city.